Arts, Environment, Families, Good Works, Luna & Stella

Manhole Covers in Japan

Blogger Andrew Sullivan is on vacation in Provincetown (uh-oh, hurricane!), but his crack team at the Daily Beast is doing him proud.

I’m so grateful that they clued me in to the delightful Gwarlingo blog. Creator Michelle Aldredge says that her goal with Gwarlingo is to highlight “some of the most inventive work being made today in music, writing, film, performance, and the visual arts.” My first exposure confirms that she’s succeeding.

In this Gwarlingo post, we learn about the fine art of manhole covers in Japan and a book by Remo Camerota on the topic called Drainspotting. Camerota writes, “In the 1980s as communities outside of Japan’s major cities were slated to receive new sewer systems, these public works projects were met with resistance, until one dedicated bureaucrat solved the problem by devising a way to make these mostly invisible systems aesthetically appreciated above ground: customized manhole covers.”

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One Response

I have to comment anonymously for right now as some new setting on my browser doesn’t support cookies, and WordPress wants it to. But I wanted to say, yes indeed, aren’t Japanese manhole covers brilliant? Someone once made a quilt with patterns of them.